Video podcaster and author Richard Harrington shows you how to edit a multi-camera shoot for your video podcasts.



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Before we print to tape, we step through our finished shows one edit at a time, just to make sure we don’t have any black flash frames. Use the up and down arrow keys to take you from edit point to edit point. If your Canvas shows a black frame (or unintentional frame), you have a flash frame. Switch to trimming, and you can take the offending frames out.



Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he explains how to post your video on .Mac so you can share your work with friends, family and clients.



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Video podcaster and author Richard Harrington explains how to compress your podcasts fast using the Turbo.264.



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Need to make a show loop for a client’s tradeshow booth or front entry? Final Cut Pro makes it easy for you to make money. In the Print to Video or Edit to Tape dialog boxes, you can specify how many times a show should loop. You can also add black in between each segment.

Feel free to use the Bars and Tone options because they’ll only be added to the first pass; all of the loops will contain just the program content.



Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he shows you how to compress your video for web distribution via Compressor.



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Like many out there... I find some of the cosmetic changes in Leopard are bothersome. Fortunately, a donationware application named Xspinner does the trick.

• Customize the Dock
• Change the look of the menu bar
• Use Widgets outside of the Dashboard
• Customize the default Save and Print dialogs in all applications
• Tweak Finder settings
• Run system maintenance scripts
• and access system utilities and system logs

The biggest changes I like are making the menu bar opaque again, showing file paths in windows, and tweaking the Dock. The application is highly recommended as it is very stable and does not have to keep running after the changes are made.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Jeff Greenberg as he shows you how to use Color's Primary Out Room to color correct your footage.



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Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he shows you how to control animation in Motion with behaviors rather than key frames.



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Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he shows you how to use particle systems in Motion to generate elements like fire and smoke.



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Join Apple Certified Trainer Jeff Greenberg as he demonstrates how to give your footage a look with Color's Color Effects Room.



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Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he shows you how to harness the text capabilities of Motion 3.



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Join Apple Certified Trainer Jeff Greenberg as he explains how to color correct specific areas of a shot in Color's secondary room.



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When outputting material to tape, an Audio Mixdown feature was a recommended precaution to ensure you didn’t drop frames. Choose Sequence > Render Only > Mixdown (or press Command + Option + R).

You can also map this as a button, and place it into the Timeline button bar.



Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Jeff Greenberg as he takes you through the first phase of color correcting in Color's Primary Room.



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Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he shows you how to harness the text capabilities of Motion 3.



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Join Apple Certified Trainer Jeff Greenberg as he takes you on a tour through the eight rooms of Color.



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Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he explains the power of layers in Motion 3.



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Need to save some space? Reference movies allow you to work with your video clips or
sequence files in other applications. Think of a reference movie as a pointer back to the
original media, a lot like a link on a web page.

Follow these steps:

1. Choose File > Export QuickTime Movie.
2. Name the file, and choose to not make the movie self-contained. This will save you disk space by referencing back to the media on your local drives. That being said, the media can’t be deleted, moved, or on a different machine that’s unreachable via a network.
3. Import the file into your other video application, and start working.
   

Reference movies are useful when working in After Effects, Cleaner, iDVD, or other applications where you want to work with a large video file. This is a useful way to export a sequence or longer segment of clips as one file. If you want to permanently save the video clip, be sure to check the Self-Contained box. Just remember that an hour-long show at DV-quality will need more than 12 GB of space!



Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Abba Shapiro as he shows you how to use Compressor to transcode video from one compression format to another.



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Looking to share some advice on Final Cut Pro? Then take a look at our Weekly Tip Widget.

You are welcome to share this with others and add it to any website.

I just wanted to let you know that our new training on Apple Color is shipping (Motion will be coming very soon as well).

Absolute Training for Final Cut Studio, Vol. 11
Introduction to Color
Join Apple Certified Trainer Jeff Greenberg as he takes you through the basic and intermediate features of Apple Color. As a leading presenter, trainer, and creator of multimedia content, Jeff guides viewers through the most important features in Apple Color. His presentation style empowers users to get up and running in Color immediately.

To Order


Absolute Training for Final Cut Studio, Vol. 12
Advanced Color
Join Apple Certified Trainer Jeff Greenberg as he takes you well beyond the basics in Advanced Color from VASST. This DVD is designed for users who want to take advantage of the high end features found in Apple Color. As a leading presenter, trainer, and creator of multimedia content, Jeff’s presentation style allows viewers master the advanced features in Color quickly and easily.

To Order


By both and save....

I just picked up a new book that I highly recommend on maximizing your efficiency and workflow with Final Cut Pro. Be sure to check out Final Cut Pro Workflows: The Independent Studio Handbook by Jason Osder and Robbie Carman.

“Today's digital production tools empower the small team to produce multimedia projects that formerly required large teams. Orchestrating a production requires more than proficiency with the postproduction tools. Final Cut Pro Workflows: The Independent Studio Handbook offers a cookbook of postproduction workflows that teams can follow to deliver an array of products to their clients. It describes appropriate postproduction workflows, team roles and responsibilities, and required equipment for some of the most common media productions.”

With an easy style and great depth, Final Cut Pro Workflows: The Independent Studio Handbook is an enjoyable and important read. Osder and Carman offer a diverse background and extensive experience with Final Cut Pro.

The American University has released a new report called Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, which finds that many online videos creatively use copyrighted materials in ways that are eligible for fair use consideration under copyright law. The report claims that some users are potentially using copyrighted material legally (under fair use). These uses--an exercise of freedom-of-speech rights--are currently threatened by anti-piracy measures online. The report is online here - we hope you enjoy it!

We love Color! Finally, we have a professional-level color correction and grading tool.
It is important to know, however, that when you send a sequence to Color, there
are limitations. And depending on your project, some of these limitations can be
important.

• Most filters that you have applied in Final Cut Pro will not be previewed or rendered by Color. Once you have rendered and sent your project back to Final Cut Pro from Color, the filters you’ve applied will once again take effect. This is especially important for Color Correction or Image Control filters (with the exception of the Color Corrector 3-way which is translated as a correction in the Primary Room in Color). Prior to sending to Color, it’s a good idea to remove those filters, as you might get weird results when your project has returned to Final Cut Pro and those filters are again active. In general, you want to choose either Color or Final Cut Pro to do your color correction and grading work, and not mix the two.
  
• Track layering will be maintained in Color, however Opacity and composite modes will not be previewed or rendered out of Color. Instead, this information is maintained and rendered in Final Cut Pro.
• Like filters, transitions are not previewed or rendered by Color, instead, the transitions are rendered when the project returns to Final Cut Pro.
• Speed effects are maintained and previewed by Color (although variable speed effects do not play properly in Color). They aren’t, however, rendered by Color; instead, Final Cut Pro renders them.
• Generators like text and shapes, still frames, Motion and LiveType Project files that are in your sequence are ignored by Color and will not be previewed. Their position on the Timeline is maintained and when the project is sent back to Final Cut Pro, they will relink and be displayed again.
• If you do need to color correct or grade generators or graphics material, you will need to render them out of Final Cut Pro as self-contained QuickTime files and reedit them back into your sequence.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Chris Phrommayon as he explains how to use Final Cut Pro to play and edit multiple camera angles simultaneously. This is part 1 (of 2).



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